Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Former clinic worker on how pro-choicers view women who regret their abortions

By Sarah Terzo

“The pro-abortion
movement makes a lot of noise about respecting a woman’s heartfelt and
well-considered “choice” to have an abortion—but only if she remains
quietly pro-choice and regret-free afterwards. That same woman becomes a
“traitor” to her gender, a mindless follower of dogma, or an object of
cartoonish ridicule if she admits her abortion was a mistake and now
wants to help others avoid the same pain, guilt, sadness, and remorse
she—WE—experience as a result of making an irreversible error so grave
as killing our children…..

“It is sadly (but tellingly) incongruous that pro-abortion supporters equate their cause for the ”right” to murder our unbornchildren to women’s equality, women’s rights, and caring for women when it seems obvious that women hurting after an abortion
are pretty much left to fend for themselves. This is intellectual
dishonesty in blind service to keeping the lucrative abortion industry
in business at the expense of not only the helpless children killed, but
also their customers: the pregnant mothers seeking their grisly
services.

“It is shameful that the pro-abortion
side mocks or ignores our pain, regret, and remorse—and refuses to warn
women about these inherent psychological risks.”

Assisted Suicide Death Cult “Death Coaching”

By Wesley J. Smith

Philip Nitschke

I discovered the assisted suicide
death cult when my friend Frances killed herself under the influence of
the Hemlock Society, since evolved into Compassion and Choices. This
pernicious group taught her how to kill herself, what drugs to take, how
to use a plastic bag–and gave her moral permission to do it. It was
literally proselytizing for suicide.
Since 1993, I have written hundreds of articles and blog posts about this topic, as well as a book–now in its third iteration–Forced Exit: Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide, and the New Duty to Die.

Derek Humphry

Perhaps that is why I am always a bit surprised that others are
surprised at the tragic consequences that flow from death cult advocacy.
Now, in Australia, Philip Nitschke has lost his medical license. Having traveled there to expose this ghoul–I helped end his importation of suicide bags into Australia–my only question is: What took the authorities so damn long?
Why take his license? From The Australian story that discusses the “death coaching” among a large segment of the movement:

The term “death coaching” is how Judi Taylor describes the tragic suicide of her 26-year-old son Lucas in a deserted park in Germany. “It was death-coaching, not life coaching, that killed him,” says the Melbourne mother of three sons.

Lucas, a talented linguist, ended his life after taking an -euthanasia drug he had bought in Peru. Judi Taylor says her son’s every step and every instruction – and strong encouragement – came from a Peaceful Pill onlineforum run by Exit International, the pro-euthanasia lobby group run by now-suspended medical practitioner Philip Nitschke.

Jack Kevorkian

Take a look into the death cult world of Nitschke, Derek Humphry
(founder of the Hemlock Society), the Final Exit Network, and Jack
Kevorkian, among others:

It is the case of Lucas Taylor, whose
unpublicised suicide -occurred in April 2012, and his mother’s detailed
plea to the medical board that may have sealed Dr Nitschke’s fate.
Lucas spent many hours chatting online
with fellow paid-up members of Exit Inter-national, who are sent an
ebook copy of Dr Nitschke’s writing on euthanasia as part of their fee.

It was a secretive world that Judi Taylor discovered only after his death, when she and her -remaining sons hacked into his computer,
found his Peaceful Pill forum password and began reading a bizarre and
grim litany of -online conversations. “There seemed to be hundreds of
people busying talking to each other about the best methods to commit
suicide,” she says. “Lucas mentioned in his posts that he’d learned
about importing illegal drugs and what airports to use.

One person would say: ‘Oh, Nembutal’s the way to go.’ They’d discuss whether the best place
to go was China or Peru. “It seemed to be peer-to-peer communication,
and in all the hundreds of messages nobody was saying they had a
terminal illness…

Because assisted suicide/euthanasia isn’t about “terminal illness” and never has been.
It is important to note that Nitschke is not a pariah in the international assisted suicide movement. He is a rock star. He has often spoke at big “right to die” events, including past biannual conventions of the The World Federation
of Right to Die Societies. (This year, Derek Humphry–who published the
newsletters that helped lead Frances to the grave and whose advocacy has
led to dead teenagers–will be an honored speaker. It’s what they all
are.)

Media love Nitschke too (and Humphry, and Kevorkian, etc.). I recall
debating him on CNN, and in the moments before we went live, the producer
effusively thanked him for appearing on the show: “Thank you, Dr.
Nitschke! Oh, thank you for being with us! Thank you!” I am not
exaggerating. It made me sick.

So does the euthanasia movement. Some advocates present a far more
sophisticated approach than Nitschke, Humphry, and Kevorkian. But
scratch beneath the veneer, they are all part of the same death cult,
promoting in different versions, the same death coaching.

Where have we heard this before? Pro-abortionists shunning “pro-choice” label

By Dave Andrusko

Cover of the January 2013 issue of Time magazine

Wait a minute. Didn’t we just write about this? Yes, we did, in January 2013. (See nrlc.cc/1lSbzSf; and nrlc.cc/1oGwFIi.)
Like a snake shedding an old skin, pro-abortionists were keen to be
free of the “pro-choice” label. Now—coincidentally with mid-term
elections rapidly approaching—once again we read in the Abortion Industry’s in-house newspaper, the New York Times, that “Advocates Shun ‘Pro-Choice’ to Expand Message.”

PlannedParenthood was the moving force in 2013. Citing the results of focus groups,
Planned Parenthood said its “newest messaging will be moving away from
the language of choice.” According to Anna North, writing at
buzzfeed.com

“Rather than selecting a new term to
replace ‘pro-choice,’ Planned Parenthood hopes to move beyond such terms
entirely and present abortion
as something too complicated to be divided into two sides. A
soon-to-be-released Planned Parenthood video takes this new approach,
casting labels like pro-life and pro-choice as limiting and abortion as a
complex and personal decision.

“We just don’t know a woman’s specific situation,’ says the ad (not yet online). ‘We’re not in her shoes.’”

There wasn’t unanimity last year, nor is there total
consensus on dropping “pro-choice” this year. You have to read Jackie
Calmes’ story from yesterday carefully to understand why the renewed
emphasis.
The first explanation—and most illuminating–is that “advocates
say that the term pro-choice, which has for so long been closely
identified with abortion, does not reflect the range of women’s health
and economic issues now
being debated.” Moreover, they add, nor “does it speak to a new
generation of young women, who tell pollsters that they reject political
labels — not least one that dates back four decades, to the Supreme
Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that established a constitutional right to
abortion.”

What does that mean in English?
That the tread on the pro-choice tire is almost completely gone. That more
and more Americans self-identify as pro-life, including younger women.
And that the Planned Parenthoods are desperate to branch out their
interminably stupid “war on women” mantra by talking less and less about
abortion and more and more about “women’s health.”

(What doesn’t get discussed, and which is keenly important, is that
today’s woman—feminist, post-feminist, traditionalist—has long since
grown weary of the victimization game. Conjuring up images of coat-hangers and ‘back-alley abortions’ is both insulting and hugely off-putting.)
What else in Calmes’ story? Pro-abortionists tried to persuade
themselves that even though more and more people (male and female) are
identifying as pro-life, that didn’t mean they were in favor of limitations. Of course, this also manages to miss that many who self-identify as “pro-choice” are quite willing to support at least some protections, if not many.

“But such results,” Calmes wrote, “also showed the weakness of the
pro-choice label, advocates and pollsters said.” So, in accordion-like
fashion, they expanded to include different labels, all of which had the (intended) effect of putting less and less emphasis on abortion.
What does it say about pro-abortionists that they are giving up “One
of the most enduring labels of modern politics — pro-choice”? Calmes
gently describes the change away from this meaningless label as a result
of it having “fallen from favor, a victim of changed times and generational preferences.”

A more direct way of
saying it would be that “pro-choice” is passé. An even clearer
description would be that at a time when pro-lifers are succeeding on so
many levels, the label is too closely associated with support for
abortion.

Another deeply deceptive pro-abortion bill introduced, this time in Pennsylvania

By Maria Gallagher, Legislative/PAC Director, Pennsylvania Pro-Life FederationThe abortion industry and its allies incessantly insist that pro-lifers are waging a “War on Women.” But as a new bill in Pennsylvania illustrates once more,
it is pro-abortionists who habitually treat women as if they are too
immature to be told the truth about abortion and its risks.
The weapon of choice, in this case, is a deceptively named Pennsylvania bill called the “Patient Trust Act.”House Bill 2303 is
sponsored by known abortion advocate Rep. Dan Frankel (D-Allegheny
County). The Senate version, Senate Bill 1456, is sponsored by a
one-time pro-life legislator who is now running for Lieutenant Governor
on a pro-abortion platform, Senator Mike Stack (D-Philadelphia County).

The sponsors, who are being championed by a pro-abortion blog
which partners with the nation’s largest abortion operation, Planned
Parenthood, claim they are trying to rid the doctor-patient relationship
of “politics.” In fact, the “Patient Trust Act” is political from
beginning to end.
The bill states that health care
practitioners should not be required to provide information to a
patient that is not “medically accurate.” The legislation also says that
the government should not require a health professional to perform a
medical service that is not “evidence-based.”
Who could argue with that? If they are not properly informed, even pro-life legislators might be deceived into sponsoring it.

But the devil is in the details.
In their quest for legitimacy, the sponsors are pointing to a report
by the National Partnership for Women & Families, which claims that a
political agenda is “undermining women’s health care.”
One problem here. The group has a radically pro-abortion political agenda of its own. The organization—and the legislation’s
sponsors—are upset with common sense protective laws that inform women
about the risks of abortion. That is their real aim—to prevent women
from obtaining critical information about abortion-related health risks.

And this points to the radical nature of the pro-abortion movement. They want to declare an information blackout in abortion facilities. They want to ignore scientifically-based research showing that abortion can increase a woman’s risk of sterility, substance abuse, depression,
and premature delivery of subsequent babies. If a woman knows that, she
might think twice about having an abortion—and that could hurt the
abortion facilities’ bottom line.

Keeping women uninformed leaves them vulnerable—weak, rather than empowered. Beware of “patient trust” legislation which may be coming to your state. It’s not about good medicine. It’s about preventing the kinds of protective laws which can help women make sound health decisions that positively impact themselves and their families.

Infamous abortionist Brigham in court again trying to get suspended license back

By Dave Andrusko

Abortionist Steven Brigham

It’s important to remember that long before there was abortionist Kermit Gosnell, convicted of three counts of first-degree
murder, there were plenty of abortionists who were so outrageous even
their Abortion Industry brethren tried to separate themselves from them.
As good (actually bad) as example as you are likely to ever find is Steven Brigham. He is, alas, back in the news again.

You have to remember that Brigham has lost his medical license in multiple states. Currently he is fighting to regain his license in New Jersey which has been temporarily suspended.
Writing for The [New Jersey] Star-Ledger, Susan K. Livio told her readers that last Friday, Brigham’s attorney
asked a judge “to consider his client a target of ‘selective
enforcement’ who thought he was following accepted medical practices.”

That was the second half of the lead sentence.
The first half explained why his license had been suspended: “for starting late-term abortions in his South Jersey office and sending five women to Maryland to finish the procedure.”
(Last year, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Marie McCullough put it more
bluntly in another of her thorough investigative stories of Brigham:
“Three years ago, New Jersey suspended it [his license] when he was
caught – after a critically injured patient went to the police – doing
what he was disciplined for in the mid-1990s: starting late-term
abortions in New Jersey and finishing them in another state.”)

Why would Brigham do that? “The Attorney General’s Office claimed Brigham had used the two-state practice to evade New Jersey law prohibiting doctors
from performing abortions after the 14th week of a patient’s last
menstrual period outside a hospital or other licensed medical facility,”
Livio explained.

To no avail Deputy Attorneys General Joshua Bengal and Gezim Bajrami asked Administrative Law Judge
Jeff Masin “to consider Brigham’s history in New York, where his
license was revoked for similar offenses in 1994, and in Pennsylvania,
where two clinics were cited and shut down after the doctor voluntarily
placed his license on ‘permanent inactive status,’” Livio wrote.
Masin’s explanation? Brigham has yet to give up his Pennsylvania license
(the case is still in ligation) and because (Livio explained) “it
wouldn’t be fair to consider his New York revocation because the New
Jersey judge disagreed with that ruling in 1996 and Brigham kept his
license.”
However, Brigham’s attorney, Joseph Gorrell, did bring up Brigham’s Pennsylvania track record,
Livio wrote, “but only as evidence of selective enforcement. . .to
explain why all of this really happened.’” (Gorrell alluded to Brigham
being an “easy target for pro-life advocates.”)

Saying that it was too late in the trial to bring up such a defense, Masin said no. “We would have to have a full-scale hearing. I don’t see any basis for allowing that at all,” Masin said.
According to Livio, Masin said he expected to rule “shortly.” Masin’s decision “would then be the subject of a medical board hearing to decide whether to adopt the findings.”

Labrador finds abandoned baby on side of road, umbilical cord still attached

By Dave Andrusko

24 Hour News 8’s Henry Erb speaks to Jeff Kopp, who along with his dog Bobby found a newborn on the side of the road near Diamond Lake.

Mid-morning on Monday Jeff Kopp of White Cloud, Michigan, was walking Bobby, his black Labrador mix, when the dog pulled him down the road and toward a satellite dish.
Kopp told WOOD-TV that he normally doesn’t walk along MarionRoad but that Bobby “seemed to be on a mission.”

The dog sniffed at
something near the dish and when Kopp came closer he realized that what
he first thought was a rabbit was actually a baby.
The baby, her umbilical cord
still attached, was lying on her side “in the fetal position.” (She
might have been out there as long as six hours, according to Lt. Chad
Palmiter of the Newaygo County Sheriff’s Department.)
WOOD-TV reported that Kopp called to a neighbor to call 911 and shouted for his wife and daughter, Cathleen Neal.

“He hollered for myself and my mother to get a blanket or a towel because he just found a baby,” Cathleen said. Initially the baby was not crying or moving.
Once she was picked up and wrapped in the blanket, “then eventually
she started to cry and we knew that she was OK,” Kopp said. “It was a relief to me because I knew she was alive.”
When emergency responders arrived the baby was conscious and breathing, although she had some bruises and scrapes. She was taken to Gerber MemorialHospital in Fremont.
According to published reports, later on Monday, authorities were able to find the child’s teenage mother. The sheriff’s office said she was taken to the hospital for evaluation.
Before she was identified as the baby’s mother, the teenager had come outside, Cathleen Neal explained.

“When the young lady came out and asked us what was going on and I
told her, she just made it seem like she didn’t know what was going on,
but yet she was the one who had the baby,” Neal said.
“I know she’s a young girl, but she’s not stupid, so it really makes
me wonder why,” Neal said of the baby’s mother. “It’s just really hard
to believe. It’s really hard to believe that someone would do that.”
She told WOOD-TV that she thought the teen was probably “scared to
death” and didn’t know what to do. “There are other options,” Neal said.

According to the television station, “Michigan has a ‘safe haven’ law that allows a person to anonymously surrender an infant within 72 hours of birth to an Emergency Service
Provider, like a hospital, or police or fire station. In 2013, 11
infants were surrendered, according to the Michigan Department of Human Services.”

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The British publication The Daily Mail is a seemingly inexhaustible source for stories of babies (and moms) who beat incredible odds to survive.

Add to that joyous litany Nikkita Pereira whose son Ziah was delivered by emergencyCaesarean section and pronounced dead eight minutes after his birth. The story, written by Lizzie Parry, ran today, although Ziah’s saga actually took place in 2012.

First the background. Ms. Pereira had been in labor for 28 hours at The Royal Free Hospital in London when doctors
determined Ziah’s heartbeat was fading with every contraction. (It
turned out that the umbilical cord had wrapped around Ziah’s neck in the
womb.)
With only minutes to work with, they quickly delivered him by C-Section but he was not breathing.
“The silence was deafening as doctors spent eight minutes frantically trying to get him to breathe,” Parry wrote.
“Then I heard the doctor announce his time of death as 11.02am,”
Pereira told Parry. “I felt as if my own heart stopped that very instant
too, I was completely crushed. It’s difficult to express in words how
painful it was – I couldn’t bear the thought that I’d never get to know
my son.”
Then “Just as I was about to give up, a miracle
happened – Ziah drew a deep breath and burst into tears,” Pereira said.
“When I heard him cry it was like I was breathing again.”
She told Parry that not a day goes by “where I don’t thank my lucky stars for her son.” Ziah is now 2 ½ “and every day feels like a miracle.”

Pro-abortion lobby has no convincing answers to the scandal of sex-selective abortion

By Dave Andrusko

Julie Bentley

When the leader of Britain’s oldest pro-abortion group, the Family
Planning Association, admitted she was “struggling” with the issue of
sex-selective abortion, it was a rare admission by a self-described
“pro-choice feminist” that aborting children because they are female is
an almost intolerable dilemma.

Julie Bentley, as is required by pro-abortionists, denounced the
investigative reporting by the Daily Telegraph which found that abortion
clinics were willing to abort on the basis of the baby’s sex without a
second thought. Clinicians admitted they were prepared to falsify
paperwork to arrange the abortions even though it is illegal to conduct
such ‘sex-selection’ procedures. Without getting into the substance of
the findings, Bentley writes of the “hysterical demonization of abortion
professionals.”
Bentley, between the lines, also concedes that there are virtually no
limitations under the 1967 Abortion Act. Strangely, she tells us that
“Abortion is a red herring,” presumably because women can abort for any
reason or no reason. Bentley then gets to the nub of her column: “We
should be asking ourselves, why? Why are women requesting to abort
female foetuses?”
She understands and recites the historical and cultural reasons
before pondering what (for pro-abortion feminists) is the imponderable:

On the one hand, a woman may well be facing familial pressure to
abort a female, so shouldn’t “pro-choice feminists” get out of the way
so she can get a “safe, legal abortion?”
On the other hand, Bentley wrote, if “pro-choice feminists” accept
sex-selection abortion, ”are we also indirectly colluding with
unacceptable discrimination? And therefore, allowing it to go on
unchallenged for generations to come”?

At the end of her column, Bentley told her readers, “I don’t think
there are simple answers to dilemmas of this complexity.” This reminds
the reader of what she said at the beginning: that asking this question
“doesn’t make me a hypocrite or water down my pro-choice values. But it
does mean I’m asking myself some really difficult questions.”

Anthony Ozimic of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children
(SPUC) may have put it best when he said, “Ms. Bentley’s admission
proves that the pro-abortion lobby has no convincing answers to the
scandal of sex-selective abortion.”

By Karen Malec, President, Coalition on Abortion/Breast CancerA scientific review
conducted by Angela Lanfranchi, MD and Patrick Fagan, Ph.D., found that
support for an abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link exists in current
knowledge of breast physiology (as it is presented in standard medical
texts), as well as epidemiological and experimental research. The
review, published in Issues in Law and Medicine, is entitled, “Breast
cancer and induced abortion:
A comprehensive review of breast development and pathophysiology, the
epidemiologic literature, and proposal for creation of databanks to
elucidate all breast cancer risk factors.”[1]

Lanfranchi is Clinical Assistant
Professor of Surgery at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Fagan is the Director of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute.
Among 72 epidemiological studies they reviewed, the authors explained:

“…21 show some positive,
statistically significant relationship. Seven studies show a positive,
marginally significant link between induced abortion and breast cancer.
Of three meta-analyses on the subject, two show a positive,
statistically significant link between induced abortion and breast
cancer. Two ecological epidemiological studies show a relationship
between induced abortion and breast cancer. These studies have been
conducted over fifty years across multiple cultures and countries….”[2]

The authors explained that surging pregnancy hormones (mostly
estrogen) stimulate breast growth during the first months of pregnancy,
leaving the breasts with an increase in cancer-susceptible Type 1 and
Type 2 lobules (where most cancers are known to originate). If the
mother carries her pregnancy to 32 weeks, her risk sharply declines
because she has matured a sufficient number of lobules into permanently
cancer-resistant Type 4 lobules; and she has acquired 90% of the risk reduction
associated with a full term pregnancy. The authors said this evidence
explains why other well-accepted reproductive risk factors raise risk
including childlessness, premature birth before 32 weeks and second trimester miscarriages.[3]

The authors identified methods that are being used in gravely flawed studies that result in either an underestimate or the elimination of the risk: i.e., failure to follow women for a minimum of eight to 10 years after an abortion
so that cancers are detectable; excluding breast cancer patients and
women with histories of breast cancer; excluding consideration of women
who died of the disease; confining their analyses to young women in
their reproductive years; only comparing childless aborting women with
childless never-pregnant women, instead of making the comparison with
childbearing women (who are at reduced risk for breast cancer); and
ignoring the effects of highly carcinogenic abortions (i.e., abortions
occurring before first full term pregnancy, before age 18 or after age
30; abortions among women with a family history of breast cancer; and second trimester abortions).
The National Cancer Institute
concluded after its 2003 workshop that abortion is not associated with
breast cancer. But Lanfranchi and Fagan said the NCI’s conclusion
contradicts not only epidemiological evidence of a link, but also
accepted reproductive risks for breast cancer listed in standard texts
including premature birth before 32 weeks gestation, delayed first full
term pregnancy and childlessness.[4]
The authors analyzed the evidence in light of the nine criteria that Sir Austin
Bradford Hill recommended in 1965. These guidelines are used to help
determine whether a cause-effect relationship exists between a potential
risk factor and a disease. After demonstrating that all nine criteria
have been met, Lanfranchi and Fagan concluded:

“We see that many studies of induced
abortion demonstrate significant associations, across multiple cultures
and with some apparent specificity of cause (hormoneexposure).
The association manifests itself in the appropriate order, demonstrates
a dose effect, is biologically plausible and coherent with existing
science and has been demonstrated by analogy.”[5]

ABC link critics claim that recall bias is a flaw in research
supporting a link. But they conveniently ignore studies that are free
of any possibility of recall bias, including a prospective study on
women in New York and two ecological studies.[6-8] Lanfranchi and Fagan called the recall bias hypothesis “unproven.”

In order to expand knowledge of the link, the authors recommended the establishment of a tissue bank and the development of a research data network
located in existing mammography screening centers that would collect
standardized data on forms concerning women’s reproductive, hormonal and
breast histories that would include all potential risk factors.Editor’s note. The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international women’s organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer.

Parental notification law drives down teen abortions in Minnesota

Supreme Court ruling 24 years ago opened the door to similar lifesaving measures

Editor’s note. I did not see this when it first ran last month, but the importance of this post from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life needs to be shared.MINNEAPOLIS—Teen abortions
in Minnesota have declined dramatically since the state enacted a law
requiring parental notification before minors undergo abortions.
Tomorrow [June 25] is the 24th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Minnesota’s parental notification requirement.

The law (MN Statute 144.343), strongly supported by Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL),
was passed by the Legislature with large bipartisan majorities in 1981.
It requires that both parents be notified at least 48 hours before an
abortion is performed on a minor girl. The measure includes a judicial bypass procedure, which is required by the courts, and exceptions for rare cases.
Minnesota’s law was in place until 1986, when it was enjoined by a federaldistrict court.
The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled on June 25, 1990, in the case
of Hodgson v. Minnesota, upholding both the two-parent and 48-hour
requirements. The law went back into effect that year.

“Our Minnesota law and the Supreme Court decision affirming it helped open the floodgates for more
state parental involvement laws,” commented MCCL Executive Director
Scott Fischbach. “Strong evidence shows that these laws, among other
factors, reduce the incidence of teen abortions.”

The annual number of minor abortions
in Minnesota peaked at 2,327 in 1980, the year before the parental
notification law first went into effect. Teen abortions then began to
steadily decline. Since 1989, the last full year before the Supreme Court ruling,
abortions performed on minors have dropped 71.7 percent. In 2012 (the
latest year for which data is available), minor abortions fell to 403,
the lowest number on record (statistics for minors go back to 1975) and
only 3.8 percent of all abortions.
Despite clear public support for parental involvement
laws, they are opposed by abortion advocacy groups, including Planned
Parenthood, and by Gov. Mark Dayton, who co-sponsored the Freedom of
Choice Act as a U.S. senator. That measure would have eliminated
virtually all state abortion laws, including Minnesota’s parental
notification requirement. Dayton also voted twice against legislation to
require parental notice when a minor is taken across state lines for an
abortion, circumventing the law in the state where she lives.

“Parental involvement laws don’t
just save unborn lives from abortion,” noted Fischbach. “They reflect
the commonsense principle that parents are responsible for their kids
and that kids need their parents. To exclude parents, especially at a
time of crisis, would be a tremendous disservice to children. Yet that
is precisely what Gov. Dayton wants to do.”

PPFA Cecile Richards’ interview with Bill Moyers: The “rest of the story”

By Dave Andrusko

Bill Moyers interviewing Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards

Understandably so, pro-lifers have paid the most attention to PPFA
President Cecile Richards’ bizarre comparison of abortion to a
colonoscopy in a July 18 interview with Bill Moyers. But if you either
saw the program (which I did not) or read the transcript (which I just
did, you know there was no comparison too absurd, no hyperbole too hot
for this pro-abortion tandem.
Here are just a few nuggets at billmoyers.com. As you would expect from Moyers, many comments are snarky, snide, and over the top.#1. “Thanks to a sustained legal strategy in particular, which includes achieving a Supreme Court majority of five conservative Catholic men,
all appointed by Republican presidents, they have been inching toward
success.” Moyers loves to hammer “conservative Catholics,” conservative
Catholic men even more.

Is it somehow un-American to have a “sustained legal strategy”?” To
name just two examples, how did pro-abortionists overthrow the laws of
all 50 states (in Roe v. Wade) if not by use of a “sustained legal
strategy”? More benignly, how did African Americans overturn separate but equal laws except by “a sustained legal strategy”?

#2. Every chance Moyers gets he conflates passage of
protective state laws with individual acts of violence decades-old and
condemned by pro-lifers then and ever since. They are not alternative
“tactics.” Passing laws is wholly legitimate, violence wholly illegitimate.

#3. Moyers does ask, “Is it conceivable to you that your opponents have won the moral
argument, that is they’ve convinced enough people in conservative
circles that abortion is morally wrong, leaving politicians that you
talk about no choice but to go where the voters lead?” Richards,
of course, vehemently disagrees, but it is interesting that Moyers (who
more than once talks about pro-choicers losing) even raises the
possibility.
Of course, pro-life legislation wouldn’t be passing in many parts of
the country if only “conservatives” believed abortion is “morally
wrong.” If you look at data from Gallup and Rasmussen—to name just two—shows that a majority believes abortion is morally wrong while only about a third believe it is morally right.

#4. From then on, every question is in Richards’ wheelhouse. “Do you really think that Women’s Health
Protection Act that was debated this week could undo some of the damage
being caused by this onslaught of regulations?” To which Richards
responds, “Absolutely.”
Here is one of the clearest examples of pro-abortion abracadabra in the interview. As we have documented at NRL News Today,
the law is better described as the “Abortion Without Limits Until Birth
Act.” In testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee
[http://nrlc.cc/1pmEMbO], NRLC President Carol Tobias patiently
explained why the measure is even more radical than the infamous Freedom
of Choice Act (FOCA). She said

“Having failed,
in many cases, to persuade the federal courts to strike down the laws
they dislike, the extreme abortion advocates now come to Congress and
demand that this federal pro-abortion statutory bulldozer be unleashed
to scrape everything flat.

“The bill would subject any law or government policy
that affects the practice of abortion, even indirectly, to an array of
sweeping legal tests, designed to guarantee that almost none will
survive. The general rule would be that any law that specifically
regulates abortion would be presumptively invalid. The same would be
true of any law that is not abortion-specific but has the effect or
claimed effect of reducing access to abortion.

“It is apparent that those who crafted this bill believe that, where abortion is involved, immediate access to abortion, at any stage of pregnancy, is the only thing that matters.”

And, finally,

#5. Moyers asks

“What is your response to what some
of your opponents say that abortion is vastly different from other
procedures and therefore needs higher medical standards? Is there any merit in that argument?”

Richards answers,

“Absolutely none. I mean, again, abortion is one of the safest medical procedures in the country.”

Requiring “Higher medical standards” than for what? In many locales, tanning salons are more closely regulated than abortion clinics.
In the post-Gosnell era, does anyone who does not draw a check from the
Abortion Industry really believe that the “problem” is over-regulation?
Which brings us back to abortion as equivalent to a colonoscopy.
I don’t suppose anyone should be surprised. This really IS how Richards thinks and speaks.
We should also remember (as noted in #2) that the objective of the hyperventilating
rhetoric is to make it as difficult as possible for pro-life people to
peacefully, legally work to change laws, or indeed even to exercise their freedom of conscience not to be involved in any way with abortion.
The Cecile Richardses of this world have one goal: ever more abortions. And that requires silencing opposing voices—you and me.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Cecile Richards compares abortion to colonoscopies

Planned Parenthood has been desperate for a long time to make themselves out to be purveyors of women’s health care,
when really, their business revolves around — what else? — abortion.
Oh, sure, they like to pretend that they care about things besides
abortion. They certainly do offer other services, but their own annual
report shows that abortion is their bread and butter.
According to their annual report, abortion makes up 94% of their pregnancy “services”, and the number of abortions
they performed has increased over the years, while their other health
care services have decreased. It’s all about the money for Planned
Parenthood, and abortion sure is lucrative. That’s why they have required all Planned Parenthood affiliates to perform abortions, causing them to subsequently lose affiliates that actually did care about health care. What abortion is not,
is PR-friendly. People don’t like abortion. So Planned Parenthood has
to pretend they actually care about women’s health, even lying about the
services they perform. (Remember the mammogram debacle?)
So it’s kind of cute — and by cute, I actually mean enraging — to see Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards try to compare abortion to actual necessary medical procedures. In an interview with Bill Moyers, Richards compared women getting abortions to men getting colonoscopies, asking us to imagine if men had to endure protests in order to get medical procedures performed. Because war on women!

BILL MOYERS: What do you think will come from the court’s junking of the 35-foot buffer zone?
CECILE RICHARDS:
Well, we’re already seeing in Massachusetts that absolutely, immediately
after that decision eliminating the buffer zone we had record numbers
of protesters outside of the following women all the way up to the door
of our health center in Massachusetts. These are not all kindly, elderly
ladies simply whispering in the ears.
And even if they were, it is the right of women in this country to be able to access healthcare
that they need without harassment and without the advice of dozens of
people outside their health center. I mean, can you imagine if, you
know, if men in this country, before going into their doctor had to walk
through a gauntlet of protesters telling them, you know, whether it’s
not to get a colonoscopy or just go down the list? It’s incredible.
MOYERS: Is there a war on women? Or has that become a convenient metaphor?
RICHARDS: It’s not a term I use. But in some ways, if the shoe fits,
you know, I feel like I don’t like to think there’s a war on women. But
the evidence is that there is certainly within some, certainly some
elements of the Republican party, and unfortunately a lot of the
leadership, and a lot of politicians in this country, folks who are
uncomfortable, I believe, with women being equal in America.

Does anyone else find it revealing that Richards equates an unborn child with a person’s bowels?
Anyway, there goes Cecile Richards, trying to turn abortion into
“health care” again. See, it’s just so, so wrong for women to have to
endure protests on the way to murder the little demon spawn growing
inside of them! But let’s just compare abortion to a colonoscopy. A
colonoscopy, according to WebMD, is:

Colonoscopy is a test that allows your doctor to look at the inner lining of your large intestine camera.gif (rectum and colon). He or she uses a thin, flexible tube called a colonoscope to look at the colon. A colonoscopy helps find ulcers, colon polyps, tumors, and areas of inflammation
or bleeding. During a colonoscopy, tissue samples can be collected
(biopsy) and abnormal growths can be taken out. Colonoscopy can also be
used as a screening test to check for cancer or precancerous growths in
the colon or rectum (polyps).

Sounds pretty important, right? Not only important, but potentially
life-saving. Abortion, on the other hand, is the act of killing an
unborn child. Dress it up in whatever cheerful euphemisms you want, but
that’s what it is. It is almost never medically necessary, despite constant caterwauling from abortion advocates to the contrary. This has become especially
fashionable for the abortion lobby to claim regarding late-term
abortions — it’s because of health issues with the baby or the mother! —
but that’s not true.

Even the pro-abortion, former arm of Planned Parenthood, Guttmacher Institute owns up to the fact that the vast, vast majority of abortions are performed because of convenience. It makes a pleasant talking point, sure, that abortions are mostly performed because of a birth defect or because otherwise the mother will die, but it just isn’t the truth.
So comparing a legitimate and potentially life-saving medical
procedure to an elective, almost always unnecessary, procedure that
takes the life of an unborn child just doesn’t quite fly. Cecile
Richards and her ilk have always tried to deny the unborn of their
inherent humanity, calling them “clumps of tissue” or “products of conception”. But comparing a polyp to a fetus?
\

By the time any abortion is performed, the baby almost surely already has a heartbeat and brain waves,
not a useless and potentially cancerous piece of tissue. And the fact
that Cecile Richards sees any similarity between the two at all shows
just how depraved her mind truly is

Where do Senate Democrats running for election stand on the “Abortion Without Limits Until Birth” Act?

By Andrew Bair

The “Abortion
Without Limits Until Birth” bill “seeks to strip away from elected
lawmakers the ability to provide even the most minimal protections for
unborn children, at any stage of their prenatal development.” – National
Right to Life President Carol Tobias, testifying against S.1696.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committeeheld a hearing on a radical pro-abortion bill (S.1696) sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Ct.) and promoted by major pro-abortion advocacy groups.
If enacted, the law would nullify virtually all limits on abortion nationwide,
including protective measures that enjoy broad public support,
including informed consent laws, waiting periods and laws that protect
pain-capable unborn children from excruciating abortions late in
pregnancy.
The bill, which has been characterized as the “Abortion Without Limits Until Birth” Act, currently has 35 co-sponsors, all Democrats.

With nearly two thirds of Senate Democrats
on board with Blumenthal’s plan to expand abortion, the question must
be asked: Where do the Democratic candidates running for Senate this
fall stand on this legislation?
In the competitive race for Senate in Alaska, incumbent Sen. Mark
Begich’s position is clear. He supports tearing down virtually all
limits on abortion nationwide as indicated by his signing on as a
cosponsor.Congressman Bruce Braley, who is running for the open Senate seat in Iowa, is a cosponsor of the House version of the bill.
In Kentucky, Democratic nominee Alison Lundergan Grimes told the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman in 2013 that she was “pro-choice down the line on abortion.”
EMILY’s List, a pro-abortion PAC that backs only female Democratic candidates who embrace abortion-on-demand, is one of Grimes’ biggest financiers, according to the Washington Post.
EMILY’s List is also investing heavily in Michelle Nunn’s candidacy in Georgia. Nunn ran sponsored Facebook posts touting the endorsement from the pro-abortion PAC.
However, as noted in the Wall Street Journal, Democrats running in traditionally red states, like Georgia, have deliberately downplayed their positions on abortion.
Nunn’s campaign has only offered the tired platitude that she would like to see abortion “safe, legal and rare.” Voters in Georgia deserve to know where she stands on this bill.
Like Nunn, Sen. Kay Hagan in North Carolina
is abiding by a similar playbook on abortion. She has not commented on
Blumenthal’s bill and has generally dodged the abortion issue.
However, it’s not difficult to draw conclusions based on her record. Hagan, another EMILY’s List beneficiary, has a 0% rating from the National Right to Life Committee, indicating solidly pro-abortion voting record. Most recently, Hagan joined Planned Parenthood in advocating for a bill taking aim at pro-life conscience protections.

Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, another Southern Democrat facing a tough
reelection in 2014, has come under fire for saying one thing on
abortion and doing another. Pryor’s opponent, pro-life Republican Tom
Cotton, has put the issue front and center in the campaign.
Cotton spokesman David Ray said, “Senator Pryor says one thing in
Arkansas, and votes the opposite way in Washington. He says he’s
pro-choice, then he says he’s pro-life. He says he’s against late-term
abortion, but he won’t do anything about it. He says he’s against taxpayer funding of abortion, but he’s voted for it repeatedly. Senator Pryor simply can’t be trusted on this issue.”

In Colorado, Sen. Mark Udall, who is engaged in a tough race against
pro-life challenger Rep. Cory Gardner, has not signed on as cosponsor of
Blumenthal’s legislation. Udall has repeatedly hit his opponent on
abortion in the campaign, attempting to characterize him as extreme on
the issue. Voters should demand to know where Udall stands on his
colleague’s extreme bill to invalidate longstanding protective measures
for unborn children and their mothers.
Sen. Blumenthal told Roll Call in a November interview, “As the election approaches, I think the voters are going to want to know where legislators stand on these issues.”
In her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the bill,
National Right to Life President Carol Tobias urged the Senate’s
Democratic leadership to agree to a proposal by Sen. Lindsey Graham
(R-S.C.) that the Senate hold two votes, one on Blumenthal’s S.1696 and
one on Graham’s S.1670, the Pain-Capable Unborn ChildProtection Act.

“We challenge you, and the leadership of the majority party, to allow the American people to see where every senator stands on both of these major abortion-related bills. Let the American people see which bill reflects the values of each member of the United States Senate—life or death for unborn children?,” said Tobias.

As Americans in key states prepare to elect lawmakers to be their voice
in Washington, it’s vital that candidates engage in an honest
discussion of where they stand on important issues. No candidate running
for Senate should be given a free pass
to dodge answering where they stand on Blumenthal’s “Abortion Without
Limits Until Birth” bill and Graham’s Pain-Capable Unborn Child
Protection Act.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Dealing—Poorly—with the Stigma of Working in the Abortion Industry

By Dave AndruskoSome things never change because they are part of the human condition.
And that holds true even for the most inhuman of behaviors–or perhaps
especially so–because those actions so cut against the grain of our
deepest instincts.

The title of the piece was “Working 9-5: How We Talk (or Don’t) about Abortion, subtitled “The ins
and outs and ups and downs of direct service in the field of abortion
care.” It is enormously helpful in understanding the toil exacted from
people who work in the abortion industry.
When the author wrote the piece, likely in the back of her mind was
the apprehension that someone like me would comment on her ambivalence
bordering on depression at working at an abortion clinic.
But she had to get it out, especially about the isolation best
captured, perhaps, in her comment that “Only recently have I been able
to have conversations with my dad about abortion after years of bitter
silence.”

You don’t read a lot of these admissions by abortion insiders. Why?
In addition to not wanting to provide ammunition to the enemy (us), it’s
very difficult to admit there is (as the author of this piece concedes)
a “stigma” to trafficking in the blood of unborn babies (obviously my characterization, not hers).

And if you do normal “mommy things” (as she described it) with the mother of your son’s best friend—whom
you like—you are loath to come right out and admit that killing is what
you do for a living, in case the mother is one of those you-know-who.
One of the very first pieces I ever read about the bottled up turmoil of those who worked in the abortion trade was a piece that appeared in the American Medical News July 12, 1993: “Abortion providers share inner conflicts.”

The story drew on discussions at workshops
sponsored by the National Abortion Federation. Over the years I have
re-read it several times. Here are the operative three paragraphs that
catch the core of their “inner conflicts”:

“The notion that the nurses, doctors, counselors and others who work in the abortion field have qualms about the work they do is a well-kept secret.

“But among themselves—at work, or at meetings
with other providers—they talk about how they really feel. About women
who come in for ‘repeat’ abortions. About women whose reasons for having
abortions aren’t ones they consider valid. About their anger toward
women who wait until late in their pregnancies to have elective
abortions. And about the feelings they have toward the fetus, especially
as gestational age increases.

“They wonder if the fetus feels pain.
They talk about the soul and where it goes. And about their dreams, in
which aborted fetuses stare at them with ancient eyes and perfectly
shaped hands and feet, asking, ‘Why? Why did you do this to me?’”

To return to “Working 9-5: How We Talk (or Don’t) about Abortion,”
the author finishes her pep talk/justification by telling us she can
live with the protestors and the unappreciative boss and the inability
to freely talk about her job. She sticks around because she is
“committed to something larger (the ‘work’).” She feels “like I’m making
a difference in someone’s life … and I’m motivated by that.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful—and much easier on her psyche—if she found motivation
not by lethally choosing sides, but because she had found a way to make
a positive difference in both lives, the mother’s and her unborn child’s?
Likely? No. But it has happened before and it will inevitably happen again
Source: NRLC News

The truths not so hidden between the lines of “abortion stories”

By Dave Andrusko“This New Website Is Encouraging More
Women To Talk About Their Abortions” announced the headline to Tara
Culp-Ressler’s story at thinkprogress.org. Okay, I thought, let’s read
what she has to say and then check out the new website.
The hook for writing the piece, I gather, was that Emily Letts had
joined www.notalone.us, “an organization encouraging women to talk about
their abortions that just launched a new website this week.” (This was a
couple of weeks back.)

You’ll remember that Letts, an aspiring actress who works as a counselor at a New Jersey abortion clinic,
took it upon herself –from her perspective—to demythologize abortion.
Women have to know that having an abortion is as easy as falling off a
log and safer than, well, practically anything.
Letts placed second in the Abortion Care Network’s
“Stigma Busting” video competition. Her video went viral, and Letts has
been giving interviews ever since. Video of what? Her unborn child’s
last few minutes.

According to Culp-Ressler, Letts was flooded with correspondence
and “she ended up connecting with Beth Matusoff Merfish, who received
similar feedback after she published a personal account of her mother’s
abortion in the New York Times.“

We wrote about Merfish. Letts and Merfish clearly are a perfect match.
Merfish didn’t know that her mother had aborted until Merfish was in
college. And while it took a few years for that shock to wear off,
“knowing made me even more proud of her and more determined to defend reproductive rights.” Pardon?
All it took, apparently, was to be told “that her choice was the
right one and that her love for my sister and me was unequivocal” and
“My mother said she wanted to reassure me that I had no reason to doubt
her support in any situation I might face in my own life.”

It read as if Merfish’s pride in her mother’s willingness to tell her
own story trumps what is in that story—the death of an older sibling.
As if being told she would stand behind Merfish’s decision
to abort her grandchild compensates for the truth that it could have
been Merfish who was aborted. As if being assured that her mother’s love
was “unequivocal” would wipe away the truth that her love (and that of
her fiancé later husband) failed the test when it mattered most.

So it became “clear” to Letts and Merfish, Culp-Ressler writes, “that
more people needed an outlet to talk about their experiences in this
area. So they decided to team up, and created an online space for women to record and upload their own personal videos about abortion.”
I went to www.notalone.us this afternoon. The lead video is of “Emily
M” of London, UK. I will visit the site again next week, but here’s
three preliminary takeaways.
Like Letts, Emily M tells us she had “unprotected sex” and has ever
since she was a teenager. I mention that because both women struggle
(however fleetingly in Letts’ case) with what Emily M calls
“self-blame.” However, in the final analysis (she was “lucky” to already
be in therapy for something else), she tells her viewers that she’d
come to understand that “accidents do happen” and that “two people were involved.”

So #1 any notion of adult responsibility is not only foreign to these
women, it is, to them, just another form of guilt-tripping that the “culture”
insists they endure. The baby is not even an after-thought—except to
place his or hers death on the Internet, as grotesquely disrespectful an
act as I can imagine.

#2. In explaining her decision, Letts talked about how there was a
“YouTube clip of a woman taking the abortion pill “[a chemical
abortion], but not surgical abortions. Emily Y had a chemical abortion. Here are a few of her descriptions:
It was “one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced”;
“unbelievable pain”; “insanely painful”; she had bled “for five weeks”;
and the physical impact on her body was “absolutely shocking.” She also
experiences “chronic pain.”
#3. As is the case with so many of these “abortion stories,” Emily tells us that she slipped into depression almost immediately, crying and crying and crying, although she ends offering the assurance she is “stronger” for having had the abortion and is “at peace with my decision,” having come through “the other side of it.”
And, rest assured, the abortion “has been life-changing.” Among other insights

“And I now feel so much appreciation of being a woman, what my body can do. And I feel a great appreciation of motherhood may one day be, should I should decide to conceive.”

Now she feels a “great deal of responsibility” for her body, the strong hint being you have to “go through something”—the abortion—to “feel differently.”

The conclusion? “Speak, you’re not alone”: you are “strong and will get through this”; and “you have NOTHING to be ashamed for.”
To the proponents of women telling their abortion stories, the
central belief is that there is strength in numbers. The more, the
merrier.
You would think that (even for them) the one time that theory wouldn’t apply is when the number is 56 million…and counting.
But you would be wrong.

Decoding Hillary Clinton’s interview on NPR’s “On Point”

By Dave AndruskoYou would think that being in the limelight since the late 1970s, Hillary Clinton would be more
adroit in dealing with “the media.” As we talked about a couple of
weeks ago, Mrs. Clinton, formerly both a United States senator and
Secretary of State, started off her book tour on the wrong foot. Or, more accurately, with foot squarely placed in mouth.

Clinton, like her husband staunchly pro-abortion, took another run at it this week in an interview with NPR’s “On Point,” hosted that night by John Harwood. The interview, understandably, was primarily about her stint as Secretary of State, current foreign policy
hotspots, and Harwood’s query “[I]s there a management deficit in this
administration?” (Clinton deflected the question, instead blaming
“gridlock and opposition to the president that started the first day he
went into office”—aka “a political deficit.”)

Harwood ended the interview with a reference to former New York Times editor Jill Abramson’s recent critical characterization of Clinton’s expectations of journalists:

“Last question, Madam Secretary,
before we run out of time. It’s about you and the press. Jill Abramson,
my longtime boss and friend, said recently, ‘Hillary Clinton has
terribly unrealistic expectations for journalists.’ And my question for
you is, have you been so scalded by your past interactions that it makes
you difficult for you to communicate in the way that you would need to
as a presidential candidate or otherwise?”

Clinton answered:

“Well, I don’t
think so. I think maybe one of the points Jill was making is that I do
sometimes expect more than perhaps I should, and I’ll have to work on my
expectations. But I had an excellent relationship with the State
Department press that followed me for four years and I enjoyed working
with them, and whatever I do in the future, I look forward to having the
same kind of opportunities.”

Where to begin?

First, in her interview with POLITICO, what Abramson actually told Gail Sheehy
last week was that Clinton was “incredibly unrealistic about
journalists. She expects you to be 100 percent in her corner, especially
women journalists.” Harwood conveniently left off the second sentence
(and particularly the last three words), which is arguably the heart of
Abramson’s critique, and certainly the most biting.

Second, far from being “scalded,” most of the time Mrs. Clinton luxuriates in a bath of highly favorably media coverage.
She has trouble when she makes the most incredibly insensitive, elitist
statements. That is, when she isn’t questioning the competence of
reporters, which is not a formula for making friends.

For example, if Clinton had “an excellent relationship with the State
Department press that followed me for four years,” what’s the
implication?
I wrote about this back in June in “Hillary Clinton, gaffes, and the list of all-purpose excuses.”
Her apologists strongly suggest that her problems (if there actually
are any) with the political press is that they are not the sharpest
knives in the drawer. Or as Carl Bernstein (who wrote a boilerplate book about Hillary Clinton)
put it, “Part of her problem goes to her mistrust, justified in
significant measure, of the press, and its difficulty in handling
complexity and ambiguity in context.”
That is arguably one of the silliest, most disingenuous comments you
will ever read. Hillary Clinton utters these clunkers (such as coming
out of the White House dead broke,” indeed in debt) because she’s been forced to reduce “complexity and ambiguity” into language those dolts in the press can handle? Please.

The important thing to remember is that it is significant that even
this far out, Clinton is the acknowledged front-runner to be her party’s
2016 presidential nominee. No matter how many gaffes—once memorably defined
as “when a politician tells the truth”—Clinton has many protectors in
the media and they will do everything possible to explain away her
forays into truth-telling.